Mitt Romney for President?

I was in a spiritually-oriented meeting a week ago, and there were about fifty people in the room. Halfway through, a guy in the center of the room chimed in and announced that he was going to open his speaking time by sharing with us his personal, painful example of the worst kind of betrayal. We all leaned a bit closer to listen as he described, with tongue secretly hidden in cheek, a time when he bit into what he’d thought was a chocolate chip cookie–only to realize with shock and dismay that it was actually araisin cookie.

He was making a wry point, of course; about expectations, and about accepting and appreciating reality. Later in the meeting, another speaker picked up on the thread, and proceeded to wax allegorically on the relative merits of raisin cookies.

Some of my friends are going to skin me alive for writing this.

As much as I’d like to see someone as fierce and as fundamentally righteous as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, or South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016 and subsequently the winner of the general election, I have to accept the reality that (for various reasons understood by those who understand these things) nobody of their bright, bold stripe is likely to be the one. Of course, I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but I think we’d better adjust ourselves to seeing someone like Cruz as the elusive chocolate chip conservative cookie.

Enter the humble raisin cookie, familiar to all, and perfectly palatable in its own right. Not exactly what you were dreaming of, but still very good with a few gulps of cold milk.

Mitt Romney’s star has suddenly reappeared in recent weeks, and it is rising again. Barack Obama has shown himself, to the overwhelming majority of people in our country, to be a total disaster as president, and the buyer’s remorse is palpable. A CNN/ORC poll from late last month had Romney beating Obama in the popular vote 53% to 44%, if the 2012 election were held again today.

Romney’s foreign policy proscriptions and prognostications during the 2012 presidential campaign, once widely mocked and ridiculed by Obama supporters (and most of all by Obama himself, in the debate in which Romney made them), are now looking like pure prophecy, in light of the horrific developments in the Middle East and Ukraine.

The world is hurtling violently into the flaming, bloody abyss on Obama’s non-watch, and American families are hurting from year after year of the democrat neo-socialist Keynesian quagmire and the far-left police state his heavy handed regime has enacted. We are sick and tired of this crap.

Mitt Romney, by comparison, can realistically be seen by the larger body politic as not only a relative breath of fresh air, but the guy we should have listened to all along–someone to whom we, as a country (not necessarily as only us conservatives, mind you), perhaps now owe at least a term in the driver’s seat.

Sure, we’ve seen the prequels, but this would be a whole new movie, with a different villain and, we pray, a better ending.

Romney’s flaws are well-known–all the more reason to get over them already. They are certainly nowhere near as deal-breaking as those of Hillary, or of Wampum Warren.

Most of all, Mitt’s widespread recognition and public familiarity make for an easier time with the endlessly sought-after swing voters, I think. Plus, it sure doesn’t hurt that he has been so thoroughly vindicated in so much of what he laid out, both very forcefully and sometimes rather ineffectively, in the 2012 debates against Obama.

It just occurred to me, after typing all the above–the guy I mentioned in the meeting from last week, the one who was talking metaphorically about personal betrayal and biting into a raisin cookie–maybe his example would actually be closer to an Obama voter who realizes that what he got after the election was not what he thought it was….? Oh, cripes.

Too late, I’ve already baked the batch, and I’m not about to throw them out. Don’t forget what I said earlier about cold milk (go ahead and draw all the Sarah Palin analogies you like; she was right on the money about foreign policy, too, by the way!).

About the author: Donald Joy

Following his service in the United State Air Force, Donald Joy earned a bachelor of science in business administration from SUNY while serving in the army national guard. As a special deputy U.S. marshal, Don was on the protection detail for Attorney General John Ashcroft following the attacks of 9/11. He lives in the D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia with his wife and son.